Who says physical QWERTY keyboard-toting handhelds are a thing of the past? Well, essentially everybody that’s somebody in the mobile business nowadays, plus BlackBerry, whose financial troubles may have been caused in part by the company’s stubborn faith in bulky, retro-looking devices not built (solely) around touchscreens.

But not Motorola. Despite for a second there looking like the now Google-owned company had forgotten about its once mighty Droid line, which reached its fourth iteration in February 2012, a fifth-gen Droid is near certainly coming. Most likely by the end of the year.

Photographed for the first time a couple of weeks ago, the presumed Droid 5 has once again smiled for the camera earlier today, rocking the same outdated retro design centered around a landscape slide-out keyboard.

Reminiscent of previous members of the Droid family, but also very similar in style to Samsung’s Galaxy Stratosphere 2, the handheld has a number of purported features attached to its name. On the whole, the spec sheet can’t really be called a terrible disappointment, though the Droid 5 is clearly light years behind today’s flagships as far as raw performance goes.

The bad news and possibly Motorola’s greater mistake involving the designing of this new gadget is that apparently there will be no sort of protection to water or dust. Bummer, although the D5 is at least considerably thinner and possibly much lighter than its almost two year-old predecessor.

Now, let’s see if the phone’s makers can price it correctly and make it a hit not so huge flop. What do you think, would $300 be a fair price to ask? Less? Sound off below.